Based on what is possibly Stephen King's most famous novel (close race between IT, The Stand, and The Shining I'd say), IT is the story of seven kids in the town of Derry, Maine who realize that there is a monster stalking the streets, killing children. A monster who masquerades as a clown named Pennywise. This creature, what they simply refer to as It, emerges in cycles of 20-30 years, starting a cycle with some horrific murder, and ending it in a virtual holocaust of deaths. For It feeds on fear. Also children. But fear makes them so tasty.

IT was first adapted as a TV movie back in 1990, and, well...while it certainly taught a lot of kids back then what "coulrophobia" was back in the day...that adaptation doesn't hold up so well anymore. Despite the presence of the always awesome Tim Curry as Pennywise. I mean, for every instance of Pennywise being loving creepy as hell...

We have...um...

To be honest, I'm not sure what's happening here. Twenty seven years later.

Look, I'm not saying that the original version of IT is terrible, it's highly entertaining. But it suffers from being made-for-TV. This year though, we get the hard R version of IT. And the results are promising at least.

A few other changes have been made to make the film more relevant: instead of being set in the mid-1950's, the first part of IT will be set in 1989. Yep, first part. This is part one of two, the second part detailing how the seven kids, "The Loser's Club", reunite to defeat Pennywise -and by extension, the town of Derry iteself - once and for all. The second film will likely see release in either 2018 or 2019.

Basically, the above trailer hits the right tone for this adaptation, being big on atmosphere. A great deal of the novel ran on the threat of Pennywise, although his appearances were just as intense. The few shots we get of Pennywise in the trailer reinforce that nicely. Also, I'm just gonna say this, this version has already succeeded in one major point: While not scary, balloons are goddamned eerie in this version. Just that shot of the balloon moving across the room behind the character of Ben is creepy as gently caress.

quote:

Fukunaga had planned on making “It” into two films. Although early reports indicated that the director left over budgetary concerns, Fukunaga maintained that wasn’t the case. Both sides had agreed on making the two films for $32 million, according to the director. But Fukunaga said he had bigger disagreements with New Line over the direction of the story. A rep from New Line didn’t respond to a request for a comment. Here’s Fukunaga’s explanation:

Fukunaga: “I was trying to make an unconventional horror film. It didn’t fit into the algorithm of what they knew they could spend and make money back on based on not offending their standard genre audience. Our budget was perfectly fine. We were always hovering at the $32 million mark, which was their budget. It was the creative that we were really battling. It was two movies. They didn’t care about that. In the first movie, what I was trying to do was an elevated horror film with actual characters. They didn’t want any characters. They wanted archetypes and scares. I wrote the script. They wanted me to make a much more inoffensive, conventional script. But I don’t think you can do proper Stephen King and make it inoffensive.

“The main difference was making Pennywise more than just the clown. After 30 years of villains that could read the emotional minds of characters and scare them, trying to find really sadistic and intelligent ways he scares children, and also the children had real lives prior to being scared. And all that character work takes time. It’s a slow build, but it’s worth it, especially by the second film. But definitely even in the first film, it pays off.

“It was being rejected. Every little thing was being rejected and asked for changes. Our conversations weren’t dramatic. It was just quietly acrimonious. We didn’t want to make the same movie. We’d already spent millions on pre-production. I certainly did not want to make a movie where I was being micro-managed all the way through production, so I couldn’t be free to actually make something good for them. I never desire to screw something up. I desire to make something as good as possible.

"That scene" is not going to be in the movie. There is no reason to assume will be in the movie. It is a fundamentally widely-mocked and rarely-liked scene in a film adaptation that is already taking plenty of more-controversial liberties with the concept anyway. There is no logical reason to even mention that scene except to make sure everyone knows you don't want in it because, no, the scene is not going to be in.

The greatest sensual pleasure there is is to know the desires of another!

Fun Shoe

I wonder how many times that scene will come up in this thread between now and the release of the movie.

I said this in another thread, but the scene serves a very simple purpose in the book, so its no problem to just swap it out with something else that accomplishes the same thing. Of course, the ease of doing that only makes you wonder even more why King put it in the book in the first place but hey the dude was rarely sober so who knows what was going on in his head.

I wonder how many times that scene will come up in this thread between now and the release of the movie.

I said this in another thread, but the scene serves a very simple purpose in the book, so its no problem to just swap it out with something else that accomplishes the same thing. Of course, the ease of doing that only makes you wonder even more why King put it in the book in the first place but hey the dude was rarely sober so who knows what was going on in his head.

What I've never understood is that there's "that scene" but don't they either right before or right after slice their palms to become blood brothers/sister? It seems like that fills the same purpose which like you said makes it even more ridiculous why the other part is even in there.

They really can't keep *that scene* in the movie without the MPAA slapping it with an NC17 and effectively shutting that poo poo down...right?

There's no way that scene will be in the movie but I don't think it would be NC-17 if it was depending on how they film it. The War Zone came out in the US with an R rating and IIRC Lara Belmont was 19 at the time but still she's playing a 14 year old character and that movie.

You can never really take too much from trailers these days, but I sure did like the look of this one. This is probably nitpicking, but Georgie's last day in the 1990 series always looked a little too nonthreatening to me, not ominous enough. When he goes out of the house with the paper boat it's raining, but it also looks like the sun is peeking out somewhere nearby, and the street just kind of looks "friendly" to me, for want of a better term.

In the new trailer, whether they got it with natural light or more likely through post-shooting effects, the sky is gray, it's pretty dark, the large running currents of water in the road and the way the neighborhood looks is just more sinister.

I also like the shot of the kids in the house on Neibolt street, where they are framed in the background looking in the direction of the camera, with the hand in the foreground... you see the claws poking out the fingers of the white clown gloves! Whether IT is a werewolf or something picked from more modern fears in that scene is something I'm eager to see.

I am cautiously optimistic. And overjoyed that this is being done as an R film, it's the only way to do justice to the source material.

Really digging that slide projector bit, mostly hoping they realize that the best part of any Stephen King book is the downtime between scares and don't just generalize it into a shallow Nightmare on Elm Street ripoff.

Really digging that slide projector bit, mostly hoping they realize that the best part of any Stephen King book is the downtime between scares and don't just generalize it into a shallow Nightmare on Elm Street ripoff.

Like I said, I think a good portion of IT is dedicated just purely to the atmosphere and history of Derry. Of course, you can't do too much with that in the film, but my favorite parts of the book were Mike's history lessons about all the bad poo poo Pennywise had done beforehand with the Ironworks, the mob guys, the Black Spot...

Hey, something that I just noticed, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong. In the trailer, Bill writes "SS GEORGIE" on the boat, and in the original miniseries, George calls it the same thing. But It doesn't look like it's referred to that way in the book at all. So that makes it a neat little callback/easter egg to the miniseries.

Apparently one of those "creative differences" was his insistence on keeping...that scene.

You know.

That scene.

He didn't. His script made it out there but that scene doesn't happen. There's a variation of 'Bev brings the group together' but definitely not like that. It is incredibly violent though (I don't remember if it's in the original book, but he portrays a series of gruesome axe murders across Derry in the 1800s).

All the instances of people being completely inactive during a visible crisis are really chilling, like the bit where he's running down the street pounding on doors and screaming for help, and everyone just quietly closes their blinds.

Yeah, the scariest part of It isn't the clown or the monsters. It's the sense of subtle passive hostility that radiates from Derry. Be it the fake asthma medicine to the people who ignore violence and death to the just genuine sense of malicious ignorance that fills the town. It's scary not just because of how awful it is but because at its core it is a lot more plausible than the evil space spider.

None of Stephen King's books are ever about the monsters, which is why making adaptations of them is often done so poorly.

It's a little worrisome to me that we don't hear Pennywise speak in the trailer. I'm hoping it's to build up suspense for it and not because they're hiding a meh performance. Tim Curry was always going to be tough to follow but Pennywise is going to make or break the movie regardless.

I think as much as they have confidence in just how great their look for Pennywise is--and it is an interesting look--I think it misses the mark on Pennywise's whole deal. In reality I think their character has a lot in common with Freddy Krueger in terms of just their disdain for their young victims. Despite their otherworldliness, they are very much coded as adults. Adults who resent, hate, and want to devour children. They are fundamentally abusers as seen through the lenses of grungy late 80s fairytales.

I think what worked so well about Curry's Pennywise is that he really was just a lovely Bozo the Clown. Even a picture of Curry just looking friendly in the clown make-up is terrifying because Bozo and Ronald McDonald look creepy. But there is at work this other level that the children are made to feel unreasonable. Bozo and Ronald McDonald are scary looking dudes created by adults and pushed onto children. And it is the children who are treated unreasonable when they find the creatures scary.

This ties into an element of the book that the adults are literally blind to the horrors the kids face. Pennywise is such a scary force because he exists with a level of authority. The parents, teachers, and cops are all on some level complicit in his actions. A lot of the scariest parts of the book and original movie are not when he violently goes on the attack, but when he tries to lure kids to him. When he lets them feel uneasy but also helpless to not listen to him. The book and the original film really push the notion that the biggest fear the kids often face is the adults in their lives.

The Losers know Pennywise is a real threat, but like those who abuse children in the real world, Pennywise works to force them to feel unreasonable for challenging him or even being afraid of him.

The new Pennywise design is simultaneously much more Victorian looking and also much more childlike in appearance. And I think it just loses all the stuff I'm talking about. He's something that you fundamentally know you should find scary. Making him more antique in appearance works to sort of divorce him from the realm of adulthood and everyday lives of the kids. And the more childlike appearance takes away from that gross adult disdain of youth that defined Curry's performance.

I will say though, there is one part in the original book where It turns into Frankenstein's monster. Since this is the 80s, I would lose my poo poo if he showed up as Jason or something for a scene.

Two things that really stood out for me from the book that were left out of the TV movie was the weird time shifting old house with the scary as gently caress mummy that pops out of a basement window, and something about a fridge full of flesh eating bugs. If they can add those two and maybe do justice to the weird lovecraftian spider thing towards the end that everyone seems to hate (but I love) I'll be pretty happy. The trailer gives me hope.

I always felt that a movie version of the story should have different actors portraying slightly different versions of Pennywise the Dancing Clown to lend to the eeriness of his character. That said, I kind of dig the old victorian look he's wearing in the movie. It's kind of unsettling in it's own way.

I always felt that a movie version of the story should have different actors portraying slightly different versions of Pennywise the Dancing Clown to lend to the eeriness of his character. That said, I kind of dig the old victorian look he's wearing in the movie. It's kind of unsettling in it's own way.

My hope was always that they would translate the book's dichotomy of older people seeing Pennywise as Bozo and younger people seeing him as Ronald McDonald. Since it takes place in the 80s I was hoping they would get a pretty likable comedian or someone like Tom Kenny doing a Ronald McDonald Pennywise. Play up that creepy guidance counselor tone that Ronald McDonald speaks in as opposed to the old comedian that Curry's Pennywise presented him as.

I think he reminds of my issue with Annabelle which does a lot to make it's doll look super creepy and forgets that dolls are creepy on their own.

I'm hoping there's more to this in this adaptation. The 90's TV movie hyper-focused on Pennywise being IT a little too much in my opinion, as opposed to IT being able to manifest as an avatar of fear itself.

I rewatched the made for tv movies last night, its almost comically how ignorant and malevolent the common people of the town are. Like how no adults trust the kids and even that kid who the fat kid's family is living with saying that they only took them in because of their "Christian's duty". Its almost like the small town deserves to be preyed upon by a giant spider monster.

The second part gets so boring for me to watch. They go into the sewers with a sling shot? These are grown adults and they show them being kinda successful. They couldn't be bothered to bring any guns to hunt IT? Isn't one of them a cop too?

I rewatched the made for tv movies last night, its almost comically how ignorant and malevolent the common people of the town are. Like how no adults trust the kids and even that kid who the fat kid's family is living with saying that they only took them in because of their "Christian's duty". Its almost like the small town deserves to be preyed upon by a giant spider monster.

The second part gets so boring for me to watch. They go into the sewers with a sling shot? These are grown adults and they show them being kinda successful. They couldn't be bothered to bring any guns to hunt IT? Isn't one of them a cop too?

A major factor with It is that it isn't vulnerable to actual weapons. It's vulnerable to childish faith. The reason why it waits until they are adults to get revenge is that it believes (largely correctly) that they no longer have the ability to hurt it.